Wide-angle lenses benefits for action photography

Wide-angle lenses provides a lot of benefits when it comes to action photography. Here are four reasons that I love the most!

1. Wide angles create increased depth of field

That’s super convenient when you want to have more things in focus (like about a group of people for example). If you still want blurriness to show in the background and foreground, pick a large aperture lens (like f/2.8) and choose the widest aperture.

Tip: Large aperture prime lenses like Tamron’s 20mm f/2.8, 24mm f/2.8 and 35mm f/2.8 tend to be cheaper, smaller and lighter than zooms.

2. They put the subject in context

Tight shots emphasis emotion, whereas looser-framed pictures puts the subject in context. Whether you’re at the gym, walking in the city or hiking in the forest, a wider compositions will let people know exactly in what environment you were — and how beautiful it was.

3. Suits great outdoors AND small indoor spaces

Super versatile, right? You KNOW your lens will be handy no matter where you are. Something good to know: Wide angles can usually focus closer than normal and telephoto lenses. This is very useful when stuck in tight areas … or just for creating nice close-ups!

4. Perspective distortion

Wide-angle lenses induces distortion because the field of view is larger than the size of the camera’s sensor. As a result, straight lines (especially on the edges of the frame) becomes curvy. A lot of people (including myself) really like that unique creative effect. If you’re not really into that distortion vibe, no big deal — it’s easy to fix it in post-processing with any good editing software!

Getting creative

Whether it’s for sports, landscape, architecture, street or even portrait photography, a wide-angle lens is a great tool to every photographer. I always keep one in my camera bag so I’m ready for anything that comes my way!